Why Darwin Matters

by Michael Shermer

  I am doubly stirred because it was not until 1923 that the astronomer Edwin Hubble, using the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson just above my home in the foothills of Pasadena, discovered that this “nebula” was actually an extragalactic stellar system of immense size and distance. Hubble subsequently discovered that the light from most galaxies is shifted toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum (literally unweaving a rainbow of colors), meaning that the universe is expanding away from an explosive creation. It was the first empirical evidence indicating that the universe had a beginning, and thus is not eternal. What could be more awe-inspiring—more numinous, magical, spiritual—than this cosmic visage? Mount Wilson Observatory is the Chartres Cathedral of our time.

  Since I live in Southern California, I have had many occasions to make the climb to Mount Wilson, a twenty-five-mile trek from the bedroom community of La Cañada up a twisting mountain road whose terminus is a cluster of telescopes, interferometers, and communications towers that feed the mega-media conglomerate below. As a young student of science in the 1970s, I took a general tour. As a serious bicycle racer in the 1980s, I rode there every Wednesday (a tradition still practiced by a handful of us cycling diehards). In the 1990s, I took several scientists there, including the late Harvard evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, who described it as a deeply moving experience. Most recently, in November of 2004, I arranged a visit to the observatory for the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. As we were standing beneath the magnificent dome housing the 100-inch telescope and pondering how marvelous, even miraculous, this scientistic vision of the cosmos and our place in it all seemed, Dawkins turned to me and said, “All of this makes me so proud of our species that I am almost moved to tears.”

  As we are pattern-seeking, story-telling primates, to most of us the pattern of life and the universe indicates design. For countless millennia we have taken these patterns and constructed stories about how life and the cosmos were designed specifically for us from above. For the past few centuries, however, science has presented us with a viable alternative in which the design comes from below through the direction of built-in self-organizing principles of emergence and complexity. Perhaps this natural process, like the other natural forces which we are all comfortable accepting as non-threatening to religion, was God’s way of creating life. Maybe God is the laws of nature—or even nature itself—but this is a theological supposition, not a scientific one.

  What science tells us is that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an expanding cosmic bubble universe that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse was designed and exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? It seems unlikely.

  Herein lies the spiritual side of science—sciensuality, if you will pardon an awkward neologism but one that echoes the sensuality of discovery. If religion and spirituality are supposed to generate awe and humility in the face of the creator, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists?

  Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

  CODA

  Genesis Revisited

  The fundamental difference between evolutionary theory and Intelligent Design is the nature of explanation: natural versus supernatural. The problem with the supernatural explanations of Intelligent Design is that there is nothing we can do with supernatural explanations. They lead to no data collection, no testable hypotheses, no quantifiable theories: therefore, no science.

  To demonstrate the logical absurdity of trying to squeeze the round peg of science into the square hole of religion, I offer the following scientific revision of the Genesis creation story. This is not intended as a sacrilege of the mythic grandeur of Genesis; rather, it is a mere extension of what the creationists have already done to Genesis in their insistence that it be read not as mythological saga but as scientific prose. If Genesis were written in the language of modern science, it would read something like this:

  In the beginning—specifically on October 23, 4004 BC, at noon—out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang, followed by cosmological inflation and an expanding universe. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He created Quarks and therefrom He created hydrogen atoms and thence He commanded the hydrogen atoms to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process to release energy in the form of light. And the light maker He called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing, so he created Earth. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

  And God said, Let there be lots of fusion light makers in the sky. Some of these fusion makers He grouped into collections He called galaxies, and these appeared to be millions and even billions of light-years from Earth, which would mean that they were created before the first creation in 4004 BC. This was confusing, so God created tired light, and the creation story was preserved. And created He many wondrous splendors such as Red Giants, White Dwarfs, Quasars, Pulsars, Supernovas, Worm Holes, and even Black Holes out of which nothing can escape. But since God cannot be constrained by nothing, He created Hawking radiation through which information can escape from Black Holes. This made God even more tired than tired light, and the evening and the morning were the second day.

  And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the continents drift apart by plate tectonics. He decreed that sea floor spreading would create zones of emergence, and He caused subduction zones to build mountains and cause earthquakes. In weak points in the crust God created volcanic islands, where the next day He would place organisms that were similar to but different from their relatives on the continents, so that still later created creatures called humans would mistake them for evolved descendants created by adaptive radiation. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

  And God saw that the land was barren, so He created animals bearing their own kind, declaring Thou shalt not evolve into new species, and thy equilibrium shall not be punctuated. And God placed into the rocks, fossils that appeared older than 4004 BC that were similar to but different from living creatures. And the sequence resembled descent with modification. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

  And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life, the fishes. And God created great whales whose skeletal structure and physiology were homologous with the land mammals He would create later that day. God then brought forth abundantly all creatures, great and small, declaring that microevolution was permitted, but not macroevolution. And God said, “Natura non facit saltum”—Nature shall not make leaps. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

  And God created the pongids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve. In the book in which God explained how He did all this, the Bible, in one chapter He said He created Adam and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in another chapter He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. This caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created theologians to sort it out.

  And in the ground placed He in abundance teeth, jaws, skulls, and pelvises of transitional fossils from pre-Adamite creatures. One chosen as his special creation
He named Lucy, who could walk upright like a human but had a small brain like an ape. And God realized this too was confusing, so he created paleoanthropologists to figure it out.

  Just as He was finishing up the loose ends of the creation, God realized that Adam’s immediate descendants would not understand inflationary cosmology, global general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, biochemistry, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, so he created creation myths. But there were so many creation stories throughout the world that God realized this too was confusing, so created He anthropologists and mythologists to explain all that.

  By now the valley of the shadow of doubt was overrun with skepticism, so God became angry—so angry that God lost His temper and cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply themselves (but not in those words). But the humans took God literally and now there are over six billion of them. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

  By now God was tired, so He proclaimed, “Thank Me it’s Friday,” and He made the weekend. It was a good idea.

  APPENDIX

  Equal Time for Whom?

  Over the past century, nearly every court case and curriculum dispute in the evolution-creation debate has included some form of the “equal time” argument. Well, even if we all agreed public school science classes should spend equal time on each perspective, we must ask, Equal time for whom? My friend and colleague Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, outlines at least eight different positions one might take on the creation-evolution continuum.* These include:

  Young Earth Creationists, who believe that the earth and all life on it were created within the last ten thousand years.

  Old Earth Creationists, who believe that the earth is ancient and that although microevolution may alter organisms into different varieties of species, all life was created by God and species cannot evolve into new species.

  Gap Creationists, who believe that there was a large temporal gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, in which a pre-Adam creation was destroyed and God recreated the world in six days; the time gap between the two separate creations allows for an accommodation of an old Earth with the special creation.

  Day-Age Creationists, who believe that each of the six days of creation represents a geological epoch, and that the Genesis sequence of creation roughly parallels the sequence of evolution.

  Progressive Creationists, who accept most scientific findings about the age of the universe and that God created “kinds” of animals sequentially; the fossil record is an accurate representation of history because different animals and plants appeared at different times rather than having been created all at once.

  Intelligent Design Creationists, who believe that the order, purpose, and design found in the world are proof of an Intelligent Designer.

  Evolutionary Creationists, who believe that God used evolution to bring about life according to his foreordained plan from the beginning.

  Theistic Evolutionists, who believe that God used evolution to bring about life, but intervenes at critical intervals during the history of life.

  Note that the Intelligent Design creationists are but one of many competing for space in the curriculum; if the government were to force teachers to grant equal time for them, then why not these others? And this short list does not include the creation theories of other cultures, such as:

  No Creation Story from India, where the world has always existed as it is now, unchanging from eternity.

  The Slain Monster Creation Story from Sumeria-Babylonia, in which the world was created from the parts of a slain monster.

  The Primordial Parents Creation Stories from the Zuñi Indians, Cook Islanders, and Egyptians, in which the world was created by the interaction of primordial parents.

  The Cosmic Egg Creation Stories from Japan, Samoa, Persia, and China, in which the world was generated from an egg.

  The Spoken Edict Creation Stories from the Mayans, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews, in which the world sprang into being at the command of a god (this is the belief of creationists and Intelligent Design theorists).

  The Sea Creation Stories from the Burmese, Choctaw Indians, and Icelanders, in which the world was created from out of the sea.

  If equal time were given to all of these positions, along with the many other creation myths from diverse cultures around the world, when would students have time for science?

  * For a fuller explication, visit their Web site at http://www.natcenscied.org/.

  NOTES

  Prologue: Why Evolution Matters

  1. We were accompanied on this expedition by botanist Phil Pack, snail specialist Robert Smith, explorer Daniel Bennett, and medical engineer Chuck Lemme.

  2. Sulloway’s historical reconstruction of the development of Darwin’s evolutionary thinking can be found in a number of his papers: Frank Sulloway, “Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend,” Journal of the History of Biology 15 (1982), pp. 1–53; “Darwin’s Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and Its Aftermath,” Journal of the History of Biology 15 (1982), pp. 325–96; “The Legend of Darwin’s Finches,” Nature 303 (1983), p. 372; “Darwin and the Galapagos,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 21 (1984), pp. 29–59.

  3. Letter to Joseph Hooker dated January 14, 1844, quoted in Janet Browne, Voyaging: Charles Darwin. A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 452.

  4. Darwin would have waited even longer had he not rushed into print for priority’s sake because the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had sent Darwin his own theory of evolution the year before. For a detailed account of the “priority dispute” between Darwin and Wallace, see Michael Shermer, In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  5. Ernst Mayr, Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 495.

  6. All quotes on the reaction to Darwin’s theory are from K. Korey, The Essential Darwin: Selections and Commentary (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1984).

  7. Interestingly, a sizable 41 percent believe that parents, rather than scientists (28 percent) or school boards (21 percent), should be responsible for teaching children about the origin and evolution of life. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey data available online at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=254.

  8. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Bush Remarks Roil Debate on Teaching of Evolution,” New York Times, August 3, 2005.

  9. I have written about this at length in my book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God (New York: Times Books, 1999).

  10. Adapted and paraphrased from Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 501.

  11. Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher 35 (1973), pp. 125–29.

  1. The Facts of Evolution

  1. Letter reprinted in Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1887), p. 121.

  2. When Darwin was in college there was a debate raging over the concept of induction—what it is and how it is used in science. Although definitions varied, it was roughly understood to mean arguing from the specific to the general, from data to theory. In 1830, the astronomer John Herschel argued that induction was reasoning from the known to the unknown. In 1840, the philosopher of science William Whewell insisted that induction was the superimposing of concepts on facts by the mind, even if they are not empirically verifiable. In 1843, the philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that induction was the discovery of general laws from specific facts, but that they had to be verified empirically. Kepler’s discovery of the laws of planetary motion were a classic case study of induction. For Herschel and Mill, Kepler discovered these laws through careful observation and induction. For Whewell, the laws were self-evident truths that could have been known a priori. By the 1860s, as the theory of evolu
tion was gaining momentum and converts, Herschel and Mill carried the day, not so much because they were right and Whewell was wrong, but because empiricism was becoming integral to the understanding of how good science is done. This drove Darwin to compile copious data for his theory before going public. Classic texts in this debate include John F. W. Herschel, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1830); William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (London: J. W. Parker, 1840); and John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (London: Longmans, Green, 1843).

  3. Francis Darwin (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), p. 98. Originally published 1892.

  4. T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana (New York: Appleton, 1896), p. 72.

  5. In Francis Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 323.